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About Beverly A. Zavaleta, MD
Beverly A. Zavaleta, MD is a board-certified family physician, cancer survivor and long-time patient education advocate.
After receiving her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, she completed her residency training in family medicine at Christus Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
In 2015 she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer and underwent a grueling chemotherapy regimen. That experience, along with her experience as a physician, led her to publish Braving Chemo: What to Expect, How to Prepare and How to Get Through It in 2019 to provide patients and caregivers a clear and comforting guide to navigating chemotherapy.
Dr. Zavaleta practices as a hospitalist physician and lives with her family in South Texas. When not making a mess of her garden, she is reading or doing pilates. She also volunteers with Los Quijotes of San Antonio, making a yearly medical mission trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.
For bonus material and more chemotherapy support tips, sign up below or follow her on Facebook and Instagram at @BZavaletaMD.
To contact Dr. Zavaleta, fill out the form at the bottom of this page!
ABOUT BRAVING CHEMO
When faced with chemotherapy, you have many questions—but searching for answers on the internet can be overwhelming and pamphlets from your oncologist don’t begin to tell you all you need to know.
In Braving Chemo, Harvard-educated physician and cancer survivor Beverly A. Zavaleta MD combines her medical expertise with a survivor’s insight to provide practical advice for both chemotherapy patients and cancer caregivers. This book will give you clear answers to your most urgent chemotherapy questions, such as:
How to keep your hair from falling out
What to eat, and how to prevent nausea
How to face tough feelings such as fear of dying
Braving Chemo is a valuable resource about what to expect during chemotherapy, how to minimize the side effects and how to live life as normally as possible when life itself is on the line.
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Braving Chemo is now on the official Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Suggested Reading list! See it here:
“I love the conversational tone in this book and the balance of helpful facts and encouragement. Will be amazingly helpful for cancer patients!"
— Lecia V. Sequist, MD, MPH, oncologist, The Landry Family Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Read an excerpt from braving chemo
Find Your Mindset
The most common cancer mindset that you are likely to hear is the Battle. People often say things like, “He’s battling cancer,” and companies sell T-shirts that say, “Fight for the Cure.”
For some of us, this battle talk is what we need to get energized and ready. The fighting words give us courage. But when I was diagnosed, the Battle mindset made me feel unsettled. I wondered, if the cancer is part of me, then who exactly am I fighting—myself? Moreover, fighting a battle felt angry and violent, and I wanted to heal, not fight.
Another common cancer mindset you may encounter is the Journey. There are numerous blogs and memoirs by cancer patients and survivors that tell their personal journeys of cancer treatment and recovery. These narratives describe the survivors’ stories, the good and the bad of what they experienced with cancer, how they coped and what they learned. The Journey mindset is geared more toward approaching cancer and its treatment as a process of personal development. This approach can help you be open to learning from your experience of cancer and channeling your energy into growth opportunities. There is even an organization called The Cancer Journey that trains accredited “cancer coaches,” professionals who assist patients through the process of treatment and recovery. For some of us, this is the perfect approach. For others, the Journey mindset may strike us as rather whimsical, over-analytical or avoidant of the harsh realities of cancer. What to do?
There is no one correct cancer mindset. Each of us finds our own right path. On a good day I landed somewhere between the Battle and the Journey—in a mindset I envisioned as the Challenge, something more like a triathlon or a mountain climb. When I felt drained and in need of help, I found a Healing mindset to be more helpful. Putting it together, I tried to envision the physical, mental and spiritual challenges of chemo as part of doing the hard work of healing. Confronting cancer and going through chemo with a balance of a Challenge and Healing mindset required both grit and gentleness. Grit to keep me going even when I was scared or in pain, and gentleness to allow for recuperation and reflection when that was what I required. Because of this balance, I could acknowledge the horror of cancer but eventually continue to experience the beauty of living.
What is your mindset?
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Braving Chemo offers exercises to practice different mindsets and see what feels right for you.
Find your copy below - for yourself or for your loved one.
“A great resource for anyone facing chemo. Thorough with great suggestions for
dealing with both the mental and physical challenges. Conversational with an
easy-to-understand style.”
— Stephany Angelacos, cancer survivor, patient advocate and founder of the Knowledge Is Power Breast Cancer Tribe, Facebook Support Group
“When physician Beverly A. Zavaleta MD was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed chemotherapy, she gained a new understanding of the physical, emotional, and financial effects of cancer treatment. She writes, ‘I find that my compassion for patients has been multiplied exponentially.’ Dr. Zavaleta translated that compassion into this helpful and multidimensional book, written from the perspective of a patient and a doctor, with a goal of helping spare other patients some of the surprise, fear, and stress of chemotherapy.”
—Patricia Prijatel, author of Surviving Triple Negative Breast Cancer: Hope, Treatment, and Recovery